Bell Telephone Laboratories Complex (including the former Western Electric Company and Hook’s Steam-powered Factory Buildings) (now Westbeth Artists’ Housing)

History and architecture

The Bell Telephone Laboratories Complex of buildings, occupying an entire city block in Manhattan’s Far West Village, is highly significant as the site of one of the world’s most prestigious telecommunications research organizations, and later, as the first and largest publicly-and privately-funded artists’ housing project in the United States, as well as a pioneering large-scale industrial rehabilitation project. The oldest structure is the vernacular Italianate style Hook’s Steam-powered Factory Building (c. 1860) at 445-453 West Street, one of the few extant 19th-century industrial buildings along the Hudson River waterfront, which housed a number of significant manufacturers over the decades.

The Western Electric Co. built an office and factory building for telephone-related equipment (1896-1903) at 455-465 West Street, 149 Bank Street, and 734-742 Washington Street. Designed by Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz in a restrained neo-Classical style and clad in buff-colored brick and terra cotta, the building was constructed by Marc Eidlitz & Son.

After 1913, the building ceased as a manufacturing plant and was largely the headquarters of Western Electric’s Engineering Department. In 1925, it became Bell Telephone Laboratories for research and development for both the American Telegraph & Telephone Co. and Western Electric Co. Bell Labs’ facilities were expanded with the construction of 744-754 Washington Street (1924-26, by McKenzie, Voorhees & Gmelin) and the Moderne style 151 Bank Street (1929, Warren B. Sanford, engineer), a pioneering experimental sound motion picture studio, and by the incorporation into the complex of the c. 1860 factory building. Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker was responsible in 1931-34 for alterations to the sections of the complex on Washington Street for the New York Central Railroad’s elevated freight railway. Research work that resulted in many significant innovations and inventions was conducted here.

After Bell Labs vacated the property in 1966, Roger L. Stevens, first chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, conceived of the complex as a pilot project of subsidized, affordable studio living quarters for artists, which was substantially supported and inaugurated by the J.M. Kaplan Fund. It was converted in 1968-70 into Westbeth Artists’ Housing, the first major work by architect Richard Meier, with 383 residential and work studio units, as well as gallery, performance, and commercial spaces, and a park. Westbeth Artists’ Housing continues to occupy the site.